


Seasons may change

by EllaStorm



Category: The Borgias (Ambiguous Fandom), The Borgias (Showtime TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brother/Sister Incest, Canon Universe, F/M, Parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 13:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14545413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: History has a way of repeating itself, and so do great love stories.





	Seasons may change

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Come What May" from "Moulin Rouge".

Their beginning is the same. Whether in a villa with gardens and a fountain, or a country house with olive trees and a swimming pool in the backyard, it is always carefree laughter and innocent touches, light hair and dark, brother and sister and a love that runs deep and true and steady like phreatic water. It’s _I-will-protect-you_ s and _I-have-no-fear-when-you’re-around_ s and the knowledge that this feeling they share is unique, divine, that no one is allowed access into their world but them _._

 

Their father‘s ambition is the same, too, and with it comes the weight of cardinal’s robes at eighteen and a wedding gown at fourteen, dark tailored suits at twenty-one and a low-cut evening dress at seventeen. Their father sets their course, and where one broods in crimson, in black cotton – unlike his brother’s armour, his brother's pin-striped silk, _why can’t I go to war, why can’t I take over the company, why, why, why –_ the other suffers in white and pink, suffers in the dark halls of Pesaro at the hands of her husband, suffers in the beautifully furnished rooms of her fiancé’s oceanside villa at the hands of the man she chose not for herself but for the well-being of her father’s enterprise. When they meet again, they are both changed, _she_ is changed above all, hardened, despite the softness she found not too long ago in a stable boy, in a gardener. She almost falls, but her brother catches her, consoles her, promises her _his blood on my knife, my gun at his head,_ and she feels safe again, knowing that he will keep his word. They have both grown cunning, knowledgeable in manipulation and violence as means to survive in the cruel world they inhabit, but what is between them is still all-encompassing, untouchable in its purity.

 

Murder is also the same, their brother’s murder. He is found dead in the Tiber, his swimming pool, fatally wounded by a knife, a gun, his senses clouded by opium, cocaine, it doesn’t matter, not really, because for what he has done he deserved to end up here. Their father cries at his funeral. Lucrezia holds her baby son in her arms, the one her deceased brother _dared_ to threaten, and doesn’t cry. Her eyes wander to the tall figure next to her, _always by my side,_ and she sees that her brother never changed black for yellow, never changed cotton for pinstriped silk. He looks like a Prince regardless, dark and tall and beautiful, and when their eyes cross she feels something stir inside her, next to the gratitude, next to the love she’s always felt for him. _You ended what I began,_ she thinks, and she knows he can see it on her face, she knows he feels it, too.

 

Their sin is the same, the sin they have been committing for weeks, long before they finally yield to temptation. Lucrezia’s husband to be is sweet, but he is weak and unable to stand up to his family, and she is angry, disappointed, feels lost, alone, unloved; but her brother is there, always her brother, when she needs him most, ready to conquer, to destroy, to kill anyone who blocks her path to happiness, and when she understands that what she felt back at Juan’s graveside was desire, it is almost too easy. She lies naked on her bed, her wedding gown beneath her, stands in his bedroom in a red dress, slowly loosening ties, and beckons him, watches his eyes grow darker still and knows they are joined in this, too. Nothing truly scandalous happens before her wedding night, when her new husband leaves in a fit of rage, runs away, drives away with grating wheels on gravel, and she makes her way to Cesare’s room, where she is greeted by surprise, then warmth, then heat, and realises they were made for this. Like Juan was fated to die for his shortcomings, they were fated to love each other in this way, too; a fact, a fixed point in time.

 

Destruction follows in their path, here and there. Lucrezia’s husband falls, by blade, by gun, always by poison, too weak to love a Borgia, and remorse takes hold of Lucrezia for a while when she thinks of what she has become, until Cesare, until God rushes back to her and puts her together again. She finds serenity in his arms, despite the blood under both their fingernails, or maybe because of it, and people damn them to Hell, but it still feels like salvation to kiss his lips and bury her hands in his hair and bury herself in him.

 

The ending differs. One leaves Lucrezia in bitterness, her brother ripped from her by war and imprudence, and she is only allowed to read, to hear of it, confined to the walls of her third marriage in Ferrara. People say their love was cursed, but the true curse, she knows, is the numbness that takes hold of her from then on, like she has lost part of herself that will never return. She welcomes death with open arms after years that feel like centuries, like millennia.

 

The other is not so much an ending. Cesare fights his wars with armies of lawyers, agents and a few choice assassins, no actual swords aimed at his heart, and this time, when his father dies, the Borgia empire does not crumble with him. Lucrezia’s public marriage is one of convenience; it is enough for her husband to see monthly allowances as surrogate for seeing her, they like each other well, and he is clever enough to get along with Cesare, to support him and not question what goes on behind closed doors. Part of Lucrezia remembers sometimes, like remnants of a dream, when Cesare wakes her with a reverent kiss, with strong, warm hands on her skin, remembers church bells in the distance, gowns of silk, the sound of hooves on cobblestone, remembers loving Cesare somewhere else, remembers losing him, and she holds on to every piece of happiness they are now allowed, kisses him back and feels whole.


End file.
